


Enough: Long Story Short

by bideru



Series: Tales from Silvermoon [2]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Angst, Copious amounts of alcohol - Freeform, Grief/Mourning, M/M, No Beta we Die Like Garrosh, a flock of hawkstriders, rommath is a wreck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:16:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27145786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bideru/pseuds/bideru
Summary: When Grand Magister Rommath was in his cups, he allowed himself to think of Kael'thas.This is the original two-shot ofEnough, because part of me wanted it as a standalone story.
Relationships: onesided Rommath/Kael'thas Sunstrider
Series: Tales from Silvermoon [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1747684
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Warden of the Sunwell is a title that Lor'themar has, and I found myself thinking: What if that wasn't a title but also an office, like Grand Magister or Ranger General? And so the Lady Neeluu was born. Her secondary title, the Light of Dawn, comes from the title you get in-game when you defeat the Lich King. I think it's quite odd that there's no one permanently stationed as a guardian over the most sacred and holy site in Quel'Thalas, so that is my very small contribution to canon.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Triumvirate buries Kael'thas, and Rommath as some feelings about it.

“Are you coming?” Brightwing asks, and Rommath is glad for the mask covering his face. It gives him a moment to compose himself, a blessed veil between himself and the world. He presses his mouth into a thin line. Clenches his jaw. 

“In a moment,” he manages, and it does not slip by him the look the two rangers share. Brightwing’s face is open, his every emotion plastered upon it, and that Lor’themar Theron, the _Regent Lord_ , is no better, even if he only has one eye. They still don’t trust him, Rommath knows, and with their prince dead and buried before them, they are probably waiting to see what he’ll do. Whose side he’s really on. As if Rommath hasn’t made that clear, over and over. As if he hadn’t stood before his friend and prince not three days before and _refused_ him, _disobeyed_ him. As if there hadn’t been shock in Kael’s eyes, shock and hurt and then fury, at his disloyalty. And when the flames had crackled in Kael’s hand, his newly green eyes glittering dangerously, Rommath could feel himself breaking as he raised his hand against his prince －

“I will follow when I am ready,” he snaps, his eyes burning and focused on a point in the distant horizon. “There are those of us in this world who are capable of doing things for themselves.” The venom in his voice leaves no room for debate that he thinks Theron and Brightwing are unable to even dress themselves, let alone find their way back to Dawnstar Village along the clearly marked path. 

Brightwing makes a noise of disgust, and Rommath imagines it accompanies a rude hand gesture. Rangers are so uncouth and savage. “Come on, Lor,” he grumbles, and there is a sound of footsteps stomping away, and the chirruping of a hawkstrider as he mounts. Theron takes longer, perhaps paralyzed by the multitude of insults and curses Rommath is slinging at him in his mind, but eventually there is the merciful sound of boots crunching on dirt. 

A pause. “Rommath?”

“Grand Magister,” Rommath corrects, not for the first time, through gritted teeth.

“Grand Magister then.” Theron speaks cautiously, as though confronting an angry lynx. An angry lynx who can shoot fireballs. “It may be easier, I think, to bear a burden among friends.”

Rommath clenches his teeth so hard his jaw hurts. He hears the enamel squeaking as his molars grind against each other. “Please leave, Regent Lord Theron,” he growls, each word forced. “I am fine.”

“Lor’themar!” Brightwing calls impatiently. There is Theron’s own friend, with his own burden. He needs Theron, not Rommath. Rommath needs no one. 

After a moment, Theron leaves him, and Rommath hears the pitter patter of hawkstrider feet fade into the distance. He stares into the horizon as long as he is able, biting the inside of his cheek. He does not look at the grave. If it can even be called a grave. There is no headstone, nothing to mark this as the resting place of the last of the Sunstriders. Just a plot of overturned dirt, and even that will soon grow over with grass. 

His eyes burn. 

His robes have dirt on them. He and Theron and Brightwing dug the grave by hand. He had refused the help of the Dawnblade guards. Rommath had never known how difficult it was to dig a grave; he had burned the dead of the Scourge. It was good work, and filling in the grave had been a lot easier than digging it. Theron, as Regent Lord, let fall the first shovelful. Rommath found that throwing dirt on his prince had been almost as difficult － almost, but not quite － as deciding he could not support him. 

His eyes fall. He wills them not to, tells himself not to look, but there’s the grave. There’s his prince. There lays the man Rommath has known since boyhood, the man he has － _had_ － dedicated his life to. And yes, if he closes his eyes, he sees Kael as he had found him, dead and decapitated and emaciated on the floor of the Magister’s Terrace, but that Kael isn’t _real_ to him. That Kael is obscured by the Kael who laughed in the morning sun as he placed an extra strong coffee before him. The Kael with fire in his eyes as he argued passionately on the Council of Six. The Kael whose eyes glazed over in their history lessons but could talk even Rommath around in circles over magical theory. 

Rommath doesn’t know when it started and there’s no longer any Brightwing or Theron to force him to maintain a straight face. His high collar becomes damp as the tears he won’t acknowledge roll down his face and neck. He clenches his fists.

 _I loved you_.

He hasn’t slept in three days, and every muscle aches. The destruction of the Sunwell has hit mages hardest of all. He knows Kael’s choice was the right one, that every step he took until the last fatal slip was for the good of Quel’Thalas and their people. He _knows_ this. Yet, when he’d laid eyes on what his prince had become…

_I loved you._

The tears come hot and fast, and he weeps.

* * *

Dusk has fallen. Rommath thinks dully that he can’t believe Theron and Brightwing haven’t sent search parties for him. Perhaps a Dawnblade guard passed along word that he has not fled the kingdom.

Kael’thas is buried on the far end of Quel’Danas, where the Sunwell Grove tapers to meet gently with the white rock cliffs that line the beaches. Kael had always loved this little clearing. Only the Dawnblade used the far side of the isle, and this secluded spot had provided shade from the sun and sanctuary from their tutors. Rommath thinks he would rather curl up here like he used to when he and Kael were boys, just throw himself flat on the ground and sleep, and if Theron and Brightwing thought he had fled to Kalimdor or Outland then he won’t have to put up with them descrecrating the Sunspire with their brutish ways any longer. 

(He knows this is the grief talking. He knows he needs to get back soon. But Theron and Brightwing were possibly the worst candidates to run the kingdom, as he had told Kael several times. Kael had always laughed at him and told him _Well set them right then_.)

He doesn’t hear the soft footfalls until they’re nearly on him and he curses himself for it. He can’t keep blaming the loss of the Sunwell for his mistakes. (Although when he doubles over and gasps for breath after a simple conjuration, he knows that’s the Sunwell’s loss he feels. Or when he wakes up cold and clammy in the middle of the night, or pretends to ignore the hanks of hair falling out.) He’s tired much of the time, but this does not excuse his hearing. He curses more when he sees that the feet making the noise, the quality of the fabric of her robes, belong to the Lady Neeluu, Warden of the Sunwell and the Light of Dawn.

He does not want to entertain and be polite and watch himself. He wants a stiff drink or three and his bed. 

“My lady,” he says in greeting, though it comes out as a croak. His throat hurts from his earlier sobbing. 

Lady Neeluu smiles softly at him and kneels beside him, before Kael’s grave. She no longer wears the purple of the Kirin Tor, having shed it for the scarlet and gold of her new office. Like him, she bears dark circles under her eyes, and her hair hangs limp. “Grand Magister.” Like him, she also depended on the Sunwell, and she is tired too.

Rommath struggles not to lash out at her the way he had Theron and Brightwing. One does not lash at the Warden of the Sunwell. In the end, he keeps silent. He can think of nothing to say anyway. Neeluu seems not to notice, and if she does, she does not mind.

“I thought to visit Kael’thas,” she says gently, and places her hand on the dirt. “I am sorry I did not come sooner. It would have only attracted the attention you so clearly did not want.” Rommath remembers she had mentioned meetings with her Dawnblades, with the restoration crew sent from Silvermoon, with the shipmaster to send what supplies they could spare to the city. Things that could have been put off for another time, for the Warden of the Sunwell was always present to bury a monarch. She and Theron had buried Anasterian together.

_Kael was not a monarch. He will never be king._

He bites the inside of his cheek again. He tastes blood.

“Grand Magister.” When he doesn’t look, she tries again. “Rommath,” she presses, and this time he does look. When did she become so regal? He doesn’t think it suits her. 

“When did you last eat?” she was asking, and Rommath honestly cannot remember. Or rather, he can remember － he ate this morning with Theron and Brightwing in Neeluu’s home, and he promptly vomited it back up not half an hour later. It had been much the same since Kael had died. His body seems to be sustaining itself on grief and the residual energy of the Sunwell.

Her fist closes in the dirt of Kael’s grave. “I know,” she says somberly, as if he'd spoken. “I haven’t much of an appetite either. Some of Dalaran’s red velvet cake would be nice right about now, wouldn't it?” She smiles morosely at him, and the image of the three of them － her, him, and Kael － comes to him unbidden. Lady Neeluu has a sweet tooth, and so does Kael, and Rommath puts up with it because it makes him happy to see Kael happy, so he dutifully tastes every confection Neeluu plies his prince with. Once they’d discovered the red velvet cake… Kael had wanted nothing else, and even Rommath had acknowledged its superiority over Dalaran's other confectionery finery.

Dalaran had been so good to him. To them. Their tutors in Dalaran had not treated Kael as their tutors in Quel'Thalas had, as something akin to a god. Sure, Kael had been a prodigy with magic, but his had been a raw, unrefined talent, liable to hurt himself and anyone around him. Rommath had watched him, over the centuries, grow from the spoiled terror prince to a well spoken, conscientious adult. He would have been proud to call Kael his king.

He thinks his lip is wobbling. He presses it firmly against the other and forces thoughts of red velvet cake and his youth in Dalaran from his mind.

“I don’t believe there’s any cake.” Neeluu is holding the grave dirt as if it were a lifeline. Rommath knows the feeling. “But there _is_ fresh bread back at the estate. And deep fried plantains.”

There is dirt on his robes. There is dirt on his hands, and there is probably dirt on his face. He knows he looks terrible. He knows he needs a bath, and his eyes are bloodshot. Perhaps Theron and Brightwing will think Lady Neeluu had to wrangle him back, or that she’d caught him fleeing and bewitched him. They don’t know Neeluu the way he did. They hadn’t known Kael the way he had either. The way he thought he had.

He can’t think about Kael again.

He takes one last look at Kael’s grave and then looks away. “Plantains sound nice,” he agrees tiredly, and Neeluu beams at him. He doesn't know how she can still smile when he himself feels like screaming.

“They do, don’t they? We got them from Tel Abim.” She is cheerful but not overtly so, and together they get to their feet. She’s gently letting go of her handful of dirt and is now wiping her hand on her robes, sprinkled with soil and packed at the knees. His own robes are ghastly and he won’t be sorry later when he shrugs them off. (He thinks maybe he'll burn them. He's read about people in their grief who rage and destroy, but he doesn't know if he can even manage to call a spark to his fingertips. Maybe he won't burn them.)

A Dawnblade holds the reins of Neeluu’s hawkstrider, a stately purple-plumed hen. Rommath does not look as she mounts, instead fetches his own hawkstrider. He pretends he does not remember that Neeluu’s bird was a gift from Kael. He pretends he does not remember visiting the stable for Kael and choosing that very same bird, paying her breeder a small fortune for the pedigree. _Nothing but the best_ , Kael had instructed him, and Rommath had hummed his agreement. (King Anasterian had asked his opinion on the match when her father, the previous Warden, had approached him, and Rommath had told the king truthfully he’d thought they were good together. The Prince of Quel’Thalas and the Light of Dawn. Rommath had felt sick at the thought and did not listen when Kael recounted later Neeluu's joy at the bird.)

The Scourge had put an end to any betrothal talk. Neeluu’s father and older brother had been killed at the last stand on Quel’Danas. Neeluu is no longer the Light of Dawn, free to do as she pleases, but the Warden of the Sunwell, her life now as narrowed as Kael’s had been. Rommath feels almost sorry for her. Almost, if he could feel anything at all.

The ride back to the Warden’s estate takes less than forty minutes, Quel’Danas not being a large isle. Rommath allows Neeluu to serve him a bit of honeyed bread and fried plantains, and he evens manages to eat a good deal of it. He puts in an appearance with Theron and Brightwing － they seem like they’ve been arguing, and when they quiet immediately in his presence he knows their spat concerned him. He icily tells Theron to stop smoking his dratted bloodthistle in the Warden’s home (and he says _bloodthistle_ like it’s a dirty word) and gives Brightwing a tongue lashing about decorum for _sprawling_ over the Warden’s divan. He speaks cordially with Liadrian about the fate of the Blood Knights now that M’uru is dead too (though it takes him a minute to remember the Naaru's name). And he finally drags himself upstairs to the rooms he’s used since boyhood, peels his soiled robes off, and falls into bed as though falling into the abyss. The abyss being the preferred alternative.

He tells himself he will not think of Kael. He will not remember that Kael’s old rooms are across the hall. He will go to sleep, and if the Void or Death or the Great Dark Beyond claims him, then that will be that. 

* * *

A little after midnight, Rommath is still awake. He thinks everyone else is asleep. Sighing, he pulls himself out of his bed and very quietly lets himself out of his room. 

He stands there. Staring at the door that used to be Kael’s door.

He tells himself he will go downstairs for another fried plantain or slice of honey bread. He tells himself he will let himself out on the veranda and sit in the cool night air. 

He lets himself into the room that used to be Kael’s room. It has been a long time since Kael has used this room. Not since before he left for Outland, and then longer still before that. _Quel’Danas is not an isle for vacations_ , Anasterian had always told Kael sternly. _Quel’Danas is a sacred land for a sacred purpose. Only the Dawnblade and the Warden live there. Vacations are for the south._ (As a southerner, Rommath found it laughable that anyone would want to vacation there.)

Some of Kael’s effects still litter the room, however. Notebooks filled with his spindly handwriting (all hasty scribbles about the Sunwell and what to do now that it’s gone), a forgotten comb, a silken hair tie. Rommath remembers the messiness in their youth, and the housekeeper forever shouting at him to keep tidy. She was paid to serve the Warden of the Sunwell and his family, not the brat that had been Prince Kael’thas. (A voice in the back of his mind wonders if she’s still working at the estate. Or living, for that matter…) 

Kael’s bed is neatly made, and the urge to crawl into it is so strong that Rommath… 

Well, what’s stopping him now? 

There is no Kael anymore to hold back from. No gossiping servants or students eager to poke their noses where it doesn’t belong. No slew of endless women paraded before him, no Neeluu to upset. So many times, Rommath had let himself into Kael’s apartments in Dalaran, intent on dragging the man from his bed to whatever he was trying to sleep through, only to be stopped by the sight of him, had fought back the urge to give up and crawl between the sheets with him. So many times. Rommath had walked in on Kael sleeping serenely, long platinum hair spread out behind him like a wave. Fitfully, tossing and turning, his face scrunched. To open mouthed snoring and the sheets kicked off, no modesty at all. And, dutiful servant of the king and friend that he was, he would ignore his baser desires and smack his prince with a pillow or splash water on his face and scowl.

He doesn’t have to uphold his vow to Anasterian anymore, to keep Kael’thas in line. He doesn’t need to worry about what Kael would think anymore, if Rommath climbed in his bed. Kael can’t think anything anymore.

Rommath presses his face to the pillow that had been Kael’s. The ache is back, deep inside, and he uses Kael’s pillow to muffle a sob. Kael’s sheets are cool against his skin, and it’s… not enough. For _centuries_ Rommath has wanted to be exactly where he is now, but the bed is cold and there will be no warm body coming to bed with him. No Kael’thas beside him.

By the Sunwell, is this how Brightwing feels? Does Brightwing feel as though his heart has been carved from his body? That the space remaining is a raw, seething wound? Would it be better for Kael to be undead like Brightwing’s wife than to be truly dead? Rommath doesn’t know. He doesn’t know but he thinks he wins because Brightwing betrayed no one. Rommath betrayed Kael’thas. 

He buries his face in Kael’s pillow once more, the tears hot and shameful on his skin.

  
* * *

When Rommath wakes up, his eyes feel puffy and his throat feels dry and his head feels like the stomping ground for an angry elekk. He is still in Kael’s old room, in Kael’s old bed, his legs twisted in Kael’s old sheets. 

With a groan he sits up, and is immediately assaulted with the image of himself. Of course. He forgot about the mirror on the opposite wall. Even as a child, Kael had been obsessed with beauty (with himself), could never resist staring if he caught his reflection, and Rommath will freely admit (to himself) that Kael’thas Sunstrider was one of the most beautiful elves to ever grace Quel’Thalas.

The Rommath in the mirror looks awful. His skin is very pale and eyelids pink from weeping. The fel taint makes his bloodshot eyes look almost brown, and his lips have almost no color at all. His hair is spilling from the high tail he’d left it in the night before, and without taking it down Rommath knows more will fall out. He stares at the Rommath in the mirror, who stares back.

“Stop,” he tells himself. “Stop doing this. It’s done now.”

The Rommath in the mirror looks more confident than he feels. He untangles himself from the sheets and makes the bed again, intent on leaving the room the way he’d found it. And then he looks at himself in the mirror once more.

“It’s done now,” he repeats. Carefully, knowing it’ll drain him if he pushes too hard, he applies a glamour to his face. The fel turning his eyes green is difficult to replicate: it changes in shades and intensity every day, but he thinks he’s done a passable job. Those rangers won’t know the difference, at least. 

He lets himself out of Kael’s old room and into his own to change, and strides downstairs armored in temper and fire. He is no longer the Rommath who studied with Prince Kael’thas, the Archmage from Dalaran, the boy from Tranquillien. He is the Grand Magister Rommath. He will endure. He always has. 

He needs to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sunwell is restored, and Rommath is both overjoyed and immensely sad.

He had broken his last mana crystal yesterday, inhaling deeply as the magic surged through him, and for the briefest flicker of a moment felt like the Grand Magister he was supposed to be. As quickly as it started it was over, leaving a deep, primal part of him gasping and clawing for more. It left him deeply unsatisfied. It was enough to keep him alive, a mouthful of water for a dying man, and nothing more. He had finished his runework with the small infusion the crystal had gifted him, made the appropriate notes in his careful hand, and snarled so fiercely at his apprentice he had brought the girl to tears. 

Yesterday seemed like a lifetime ago. 

This evening, Rommath had created the Magister’s Portal, a secret spell known only to the Grand Magister and the Warden of the Sunwell. It had taken much of his strength, and it was a relief to snap it closed once he, Theron, and Brightwing had stepped through. This evening, they had met with Neeluu, dressed in the scarlet robes and halo of her office, and a delegation of draenei. Rommath had been on edge. His exhaustion combined with his misgivings towards the Alliance visit had made him irritable, a sentiment shared with the Dawnblade captain － Tyrael Flamekissed never once took his eyes off the draenei and stood as close to the Lady Neeluu as he dared, ready at a moment’s notice to draw his sword and lay his life down for her.

This evening, the draenei leader Velen had given them a gift. He had, with seemingly no motive or agenda (Rommath trusted _that_ not at all), given them the “spark” of M’uru (and Rommath understood this to be the Naaru’s heart). Rommath had watched with apprehension as Velen had walked, his hooves echoing in the remnants of the sanctum, where the Sunwell had once stood, thinking that the draenei daring to stand where the Sunwell had been was sacreligious and desecrating this, that very last thing the newly christened blood elves could claim as their own. Theron had watched with narrowed eye and furrowed brow, Flamekissed with a hand on the hilt of his sword. Liadrin’s jaw was set, a vein prominent in her neck; she, too, felt violated by a draenei in the remains of their sacred font.

The look on Velen’s face was kind as he laid the Naaru’s heart in the puddles of the Sunwell. “My friend,” he said softly, “be you finally at peace. Thank you for your most noble sacrifice.” He hummed to himself and to Rommath’s disbelief － to the disbelief of every blood elf present － the heart of M’uru _glowed_. The clopping of the draenei’s hooves receded into sloshing as he backed away, the waters of the Sunwell swelling. One of his delegation helped him step out, but no elf was watching him now. The Sunwell shone like liquid fire, its energies shooting upward like they had during the destruction, but the air was _different_.

When Kael destroyed the Sunwell, the air had been charged with fel and electricity and wrongness. The upward flaming cyclone had felt like it would engulf the sanctum before imploding like its predecessor, like the Well of Eternity whose waters had formed it so long ago. Rommath’s eyes grew wide as the air grew warm around them. He heard Neeluu’s small “ _oh!_ ” beside him, an intake of breath from someone else. His skin tingled. Warmth spread throughout his body; he felt it in every strand of hair and all the way down to his toes, and deep into the cold, empty recesses of the hungry, primal part of himself that had been screaming since the Sunwell’s destruction.

This evening, Velen had given them their lives back. He had given them _the Sunwell back_. Liadrin had fallen to her knees, tears in her eyes, her lips forming the words “ _I feel it again, it’s back_ ” over and over. Lady Neeluu, in her capacity as Warden, pushed past them all to collapse at the bank and plunge her hand in the roiling waters. Golden vapors curled around her, and Flamekissed cried, “My Lady!” but Neeluu made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob, her frame outlined in the light of the well, and soon one hand became two, and the tears ran unchecked down her cheeks.

Rommath felt light headed. He felt like his knees would give out. He felt _better_ than he had ever been, and even the _air_ tasted different. Flamekissed, an elite spellblade, swayed on his feet but remained standing, his training likely the only thing preventing him from falling to his knees and just _being_ in the Sunwell’s energies. Even Theron and Brightwing, being rangers unused to relying on magic, were affected: Rommath had never noticed just how pale Brightwing had been until he suddenly wasn’t, how withdrawn and unhealthy Theron had looked until he stood now robust and bright eyed, the bruising and redness peeking past the eyepatch no longer even visible.

Rommath turned to the draenei, feeling almost drunk, and tried to sound wary. “Why?” he managed, unsure of even the expression on his face.

Velen looked at him, at all of them, with large, soulful eyes. “I have experienced the genocide of my people,” he said mournfully. “I could not stand by to witness the destruction of another.”

He had spoken softly, but his words echoed all the same. Theron spoke first, and Rommath found he could not object to the man’s words. 

“You must let us thank you,” the Regent Lord proposed.

Velen smiled. “I need no thanks, young lord,” he demurred, not unkindly.

Theron would not be deterred. “Tomorrow, we shall hold a banquet in the city,” he insisted, “for you and your delegation. I cannot allow you to sail home with nothing.”

“Your race’s continued existence is not nothing,” Velen said. “It is one more victory against the Burning Legion.”

Neeluu had managed now to pull herself from the Sunwell. She had touched her face, burning faintly with golden light, and the silks of her robes were sodden about the knees and hem. “It is,” she agreed, patting her wet hands on her sides and leaving handprints tinged with the same glow, “which is why we should like to feast the man who made it possible.” She smiled at him, in the same way he had smiled at Theron, and the draenei leader chuckled.

“Alright, young one,” he acquiesced. “Tomorrow night then.”

“Wonderful!” Theron cried, and he was loud. (They were all _so loud_ , weren’t they?) He saw the draenei back to their ship with Brightwing (the same ship that Rommath and Flamekissed had shrieked was a declaration of war for its unannounced docking) － and Rommath knew he needed to go with him. Where the Regent Lord went, he went. But he couldn’t tear himself away from the Sunwell. Logically, he knew he would feel no different whether he were at the Sunwell, the harbor, or Dawnstar Village, but…

His gaze slid to the waters, now calmed and lapping peacefully as if moved by unseen tides, still golden and _radiating_ the magic his body had been craving. He could not leave it. Not right now. He wanted to bask in its light. Drink it all in.

He tore his gaze from the font to Liadrin, slightly more composed and sitting properly now. Still drunk from the haze of magical energy, Rommath gently lowered himself to the ground beside her. 

“Lady Liadrin,” he said quietly. She said nothing, her eyes golden in the light of the font. He felt the same － he wanted to sit here and just _breathe_. 

“It’s different,” Liadrin murmured at last.

“The Sunwell?”

“Mm.” Liadrin’s cheeks were wet, tears flowing freely. She looked healthier than she had in months, but more than that. Rommath couldn’t place it. “Can you not feel it?”

And Rommath agreed that something was not the same. This was not the _same_ Sunwell, but he couldn’t think properly, he couldn’t speak in riddles tonight. He was a dying man now given all the food and water to bring him back and he only wanted to gorge himself on it until he was too full to move.

“ _The Light_.” Liadrin’s voice was a whisper, so soft he wasn’t sure he heard her. “ _The Light is back_.” But she said no more and Rommath didn’t ask, watching the waters lap at the shore, watching Captain Tyrael Flamekissed kneel and Lady Neeluu bless him with the Sunwell’s holy energy, cupped in her hands and let flow throw his hair. Watched her do the same to Liadrin, who closed her eyes and sighed. Rommath doubted the ritual meant anything, and Neeluu wasn’t a priestess to begin with, but the protest died in his throat as he felt the warm waters touch his scalp, trickle down his face and neck. If the mere energy had been exhilarating, the water was _bliss_. He had a briefly sacrilegious thought of _bathing_ in the Sunwell, to submerge his body in the holy waters and allow its magic to pull to the surface the very essences of his own power, which he hesitantly brushed away as some sort of holy treason. 

Neeluu arranged for an outdoor dinner in the Sunwell Grove. (Rommath hesitated to call it a party, but he supposed it was.) The Dawnblade set up rows of long tables, and their families and the servants of the Warden’s estate brought baskets and hampers and pots of food from Dawnstar Village. Homemade food, tender and warm and filling, though the mages among them couldn’t help but conjure food, giddy that they suddenly _could_ , and Brightwing was ecstatic that he could eat as many cakes as he wanted without feeling full. There was wine － much of it conjured, but a great deal of it physical and filling, and it all tasted alike, so that when Rommath thought he was consuming conjured wine, he’d find it was not and he was a great deal more inebriated than he'd previously thought. There was singing and laughing and the few children who had survived the Scourge were running about shrieking, having not seen such a celebration in all their short lives. 

Neeluu performed the same sort of nonsense ritual with the citizens of Dawnstar Village, who fell into a hush in the sanctum of the Sunwell. Every Dawnblade, every spouse, every child was given the same blessing, the same water trickled over their heads, and they were all as drunk on the Sunwell’s energies as they were on the wine. 

“What is this ceremony?” Theron asked him quietly. Neeluu had done the same to him, and to Brightwing, when they’d returned, and they all stood quietly behind her, watching.

“Perk of living on Quel’Danas, I suppose,” Rommath muttered. He thought maybe their ancestors had done this at the Sunwell’s creation, seven thousand years ago, but he couldn’t be sure, and if they had, the first Warden had been a priest anyway. Only the Warden could place their body in the holy waters, so perhaps there was a purpose after all, a more direct means of spreading the Sunwell's power amongst the people. Or perhaps Neeluu was simply giddy.

He felt giddy himself (and _that_ was a strange feeling). He wanted to laugh, wanted to dance, wanted to _sing_. Several of the villagers were doing just that outside, as the music drifted along the wind. Neeluu knew all of the villagers by name, despite having spent so much of her life away in Dalaran with him and Kael, and she embraced them, kissed the children, laughed and cried with them. Brightwing was on his fourth goblet of wine (that Rommath knew of), and Liadrin was helping some of the Dawnblade with those in need, the elderly and the sick and the children, find nice places to sit close to the shores of the Sunwell, their faces glowing a soft gold in the light.

“I’m so sorry about your family,” one woman was saying, a hand on Neeluu’s arm and another holding a toddler Rommath thought was too thin. “Selama ashal’ann’da to Thalorien.” _Justice for your father and Thalorien._

Neeluu’s smile never wavered as she trickled water first onto the head of the woman, and then onto her child. “Selama ashal’anore,” she replied gently, cupping the child’s face and leaving it glowing faintly with the energy of the font. The child giggled at the feeling. _Justice to our people_. She squeezed the woman’s arm and saw her into the care of one of the Dawnblade, so she and her child could bask close to the bank.

The woman was not the first to say something of the sort. Rommath heard many sentiments expressed, and he’d known Warden Dawnseeker had been a very kind man, and was much missed. Her brother, Thalorien, had led the last defense of Sunwell Grove, and had been murdered in cold blood. They were still clearing the burned trees and skeletal remains of undead to find his body and give him a proper burial. 

“Thank the Sunwell you were in Dalaran, ma’am.” An elderly elf, not far from Wretched, was clasping Neeluu’s hands in both of his, shaking with the need to consume magic. “Safe in Dalaran.” He nodded firmly. “Selama ashal’ann’da to bann’da.” _Justice for your father and brother._

Neeluu nodded, pouring water over the old man’s thin hair. “Selama ashal’anore.” Another guard appeared and ushered him nearby, his skin taking on a healthier glow by the second.

They were nearing the end of the villagers now, though Rommath was no longer actively listening. Many wished the new Warden justice for her family, and Neeluu kindly replied for justice for their people. Some spoke of the elation they felt, the confusion, the strength. Rommath drained his glass. He wasn’t sure anymore if he was drunk from the Sunwell or drunk from the alcohol. The sanctum, even with its destroyed roof open to the sky, suddenly felt too close, too stuffy.

Lady Neeluu elected to stay in the sanctum with the villagers, and Liadrin busied herself tending to the needy. Theron, as Regent Lord, spoke to all who approached him in his easy and upbeat manner, with no regard to decorum － like the Warden, he settled himself among his people as though birth and station did not matter, asking them questions and listening to their stories. Brightwing had slipped into the grove sometime after the last child had been seen to; he had been helping to clear the burned trees and bodies with the guard. The hushed murmurs and quiet sobs closed around him, wrapping Rommath in an uncomfortable blanket and smothering him.

Rommath needed air.

He didn’t pay attention to where he was going. He was harsh to several people, he was sure, for not moving out of his way. His feet took him to the stables, where he borrowed a hawkstrider (Dal’dorei, Neeluu’s bird, stretched her long neck over her door and chirruped at him fondly) and trotted off for the far side of the isle. It was automatic, and he hadn’t noticed until he had passed the harbor and the remains of the Magister’s Terrace. 

  
* * *

Kael’s grave was undisturbed, though Rommath hadn’t expected it to be any different. He slid, somewhat gracelessly, from the hawkstrider and stood for several minutes. The ride had cleared his head somewhat, but now, away from the festivities, far enough that he couldn’t even hear them… 

Well it was just him and Kael now, wasn’t it?

His mouth was dry, and he still felt light headed. He had been drunk with Kael many times. (Not _drunk_ , per se. Kael had been good and properly drunk while Rommath, never trusting himself to become so inebriated, merely sipped at the same glass and told an increasingly sloppy Kael he had drunk more than he had.) He felt he was betraying himself by being here, having told himself not even a week prior that with Kael gone he had to stop this… this _infatuation_ with the prince. (He was not in love with Kael, he told himself.) But with the rebirth of the Sunwell, with all Kael had worked for finally realized, Rommath felt he needed to know. Kael was dead and buried, but… if even a whisper of him remained in this place, he needed to know.

“Kael,” Rommath began, and his voice cracked immediately. This place, Kael’s grave, made him soft. He was not himself here. (This was what he told himself, anyway. Merely a residual attachment to the prince he had served for the majority of his life. The tears gathering in his eyes were for his country, he told himself.) “The sin’dorei… The Sunwell…” 

He couldn’t get the words out. They stuck in his throat, behind the sob he refused to release. He clenched his fists, and his hands shook. 

_The Sunwell is restored, Kael. It’s back._

He felt stronger than he had a week before, but it took everything in him to remain standing. 

_Your people will recover._

Behind him, the hawkstrider chirped and picked at the grass. Rommath’s eyes burned, from the alcohol or the tears he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Only Kael was here, and Kael wouldn’t breathe a word.

_Everything you sacrificed for. We have it back._

His chest heaved, and the ache that the Sunwell hadn’t healed, couldn’t heal, radiated through him. He set his jaw, breathing through flared nostrils as it overcame him, hit him as hard as Kael had when Rommath had refused him. 

_I wish you could see it. It’s beautiful._

Standing there, in the Grand Magister’s Asylum, seeing the betrayal in his prince’s eyes, Rommath had almost felt his resolve waver. And then in a moment it was gone, and Kael was encased in fury, his face twisted in anger, and this was no tantrum of the sort that could be sated with wine or dinners or words. In that moment, gone was the Kael of his childhood, the stubborn prince he had minded and studied with and laughed with, replaced with this grotesque replica of his image, twisted with hurt and hate. It broke everything in him to raise his hand against Kael － not in jest, not in a duel, but with intent to injure, to _kill_ …

_I loved you. I love you still._

Kael did not reply, and Rommath stood there, fists clenched, chest heaving great silent sobs, for a long time. There was no one around to see except Kael, and Kael would say not a word.

Rommath removed a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. It felt better to have something to focus on, and he took his time folding it, creasing it perfectly and lining the edges up just so. A light breeze blew in off the ocean, drying the remnants of his tears, and when he spoke, his voice wavered only a little.

“Enough,” he told Kael quietly. “Enough now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed the two-shot, continued reading the extended version, Short Story Long, starting at [chapter three](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24298159/chapters/58674778#workskin).
> 
> Leave a comment if you like!


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